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by nauru
Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:45 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Nicolas Cage
Replies: 18
Views: 8543

Nicolas Cage

What is with this guy? Why does he insist on making dramas?

To me it is really obvious that Nicolas Cage is a natural born action superstar. His most successful films have been The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, and National Treasure which grossed a combined 1.3 billion dollars or something ridiculous like that. Ok National Treasure is not action in the classical sense but it's action-adventure, the plot moves at a healthy Jerry Bruckheimer tempo that I would say is faster than Indiana Jones, and there are occasional chase sequences so it passes for action or pseudo action as far as I'm concerned.

When he does drama, it seems that the people who like his action work find his quiet films very dull compared to other dramas. And people who are really into slow quiet drama films, and particularly slow quiet indy drama films just seem to shit on him no matter what he does because they think he's a bad actor or his hair looks stupid or he has hammy lines or he speaks with the signature Nicolas Cage inflection, or some other reason.

When he does action people who like action love his work, and people who don't like action just skip those films since that's not their genre. Everybody wins, and presumably when the film grosses over a quarter billion dollars (as is typically the case whenever Cage deigns to make an action film) he gets a nicer payday than when he takes on ill-fated projects like Adaptation and the Weather Man.

Someone will comment that Kick-Ass didn't make 250 million dollars -- true but Cage wasn't in a lead role there, it was some skinny kid instead; I bet if they made a film about Big Daddy in his batman suit going around the city killing bad guys with a shotgun and grenades while dropping one liners it would gross over 250 million dollars. Same goes for Sorcerer's Apprentice, which barely passes for action; that was a skinny kid in the lead, with Cage relegated to a small supporting role. Plus the movie was aimed at kids. If they had Cage dropping justice and one-liners on mythical bad guys while getting assistance and occasional ass from Monica Bellucci on the side I bet it would gross over 250 million dollars. Drive Angry wasn't traditional action, nor was Season of the Witch.

Lord of War was in my opinion Cage's best dramatic role and even that effort wasn't particularly successful from a commercial standpoint. But still, with its decent level of intensity and occasional bits of excitement it did a heck of a lot better than the Weather Man and Adaptation not to mention other Cage dramas.

So anyway, I wish the guy would go back to making action movies. He's really good at them and every year he spends making dramas is a missed opportunity for him to be great again.

I suppose it's similar to the beef I have with Jim Carrey, who for some reason insists on making dramas despite being much better at absurd comedy like Ace Ventura and The Mask.